Generals At Rest: The Grave Sites of the 425 Official Confederate Generals (review)

268CIVIL WAR HISTORY divisions, and corps during America's greatest battle. Contending that "character is destiny" (Heraclitus), Tagg attempts, quite successfully in most cases, to uncover the personalities of the men who led. Man by man, each biography includes a photograph, physical description, early background, and Civil War service prior to Gettysburg. Tagg then delves into greater detail to show what each man did on the field, followed by a very brief summary of the subsequent career of each officer and a short bibliography. Although the biographies are generally accurate, there are some minorglitches. Confederate general Paul J. Semmes was not a brother ofthe famous commerce raider Raphael Semmes (216). In Daniel Sickles's sketch, there is no mention of the general's part in sponsoring legislation to turn the battlefield into a national military park, nor of his postwar award of a Congressional Medal of Honor for bravery at Gettysburg (64). Phil Sheridan replaced Alfred Pleasonton as cavalry commander in March 1864, not July (167). More glaring, though, is the omission of several generals who had a lot to do with the outcome of the battle. Gouverneur K. Warren, the "savior of Little Round Top," is not to be found. Neither are biographies of the rest of General Meade's staff officers, including Daniel Butterfield, and four other generals. It would have been wise to include these men, as well as the colonels serving on Robert E. Lee's staff. The performances ofMeade's and Lee's staffs contributed in no small way to victory and defeat at Gettysburg. Brig. Gen. William Hays, who was assigned to command the Union's Second Corps on July 3, is also omitted. None of the artillery brigade / battalion commanders in either army appear in Tagg's compilation; surely such an influential man as Edward Porter Alexander deserves inclusion here. The lack of an index and footnotes detracts from the book's merit. Readers wishing to learn the sources ofTagg's generous use ofquotations will be disappointed . However, readers will find that Tagg's blunt, forthright analysis ofeach commander's effectiveness deserves to be read, thought about, and perhaps argued with. The seeming lack of guidance of an editor to upgrade this book by suggesting additional biographies and back matter detracts from the book's overall effectiveness. Yet this is an original contribution to the mounting pile of Gettysburg literature. Richard A. Sauers Sebago, Maine GeneralsAt Rest: The Grave Sites ofthe 425 Official Confederate Generals. By Richard Owen and James Owen. (Shippensburg, Pa.: White Mane Publishing, 1998, Pp 352. $65.) Generals at Rest is a reference book for those interested in monuments and Confederate generals. The authors, a father and son team, spent almost three decades researching and photographing, even re-researched and re-photographed BOOK REVIEWS269 the location ofalmost every official Confederate general. The value ofthe source is its photographs of headstones or markers and sometimes obscure portrait images. Traveling extensively through twenty-one states, the District of Columbia , and Mexico and Germany was a labor of love. Two similar books are Confederate Generals Buried in Louisiana and Lest We Forget: A Guide to Civil War Monuments in Maryland, and a third book in preparation about Civil War monuments in NewYork states suggests there is a particularmarket in the physical legacy of the Civil War. The book complements Ezra Warner's Generals in Gray, Jon L. Wakelyn's Biographical Dictionary ofthe Confederacy, and James Spencer's compilation, Civil War Generals. Generals At Rest provides the burial location of almost every Confederate general. The single location that contains the greatest number of Confederate generals is Richmond's Hollywood Cemetery, with twentysix burial sites. Twenty-six generals are buried outside the former Confederacy and boarder states, and the exact locations of graves of generals are either unknown or disputed. The book contains twenty-one chapters arranged alphabetically by state. Each chapter has an outline state map showing the location of burial sites—by county, or city or town, then alphabetically by general. Otherwise the biographical sketches contain basic information. The price is high for the information contained, but the information is unique. Unfortunately, the text lacks the exact locations, particularly in larger public and...